Enough of Me
by fangirlgonewild
Summary: season 5, non-specific time. Booth screws up. unfinished
1. Chapter 1

Booth doesn't mean for it to play out like it does.

He stands in her doorway for a long time, because there isn't anything else he can say or do. He's a gentleman, albeit not a Southern one, but a gentleman nonetheless. He opens car doors and pulls out chairs. He removes his hat when he walks inside. He doesn't tolerate rudeness and he treats women with respect.

Yet here he is, listening to the girl he made cry through her bathroom door.

He cracked his own heart in the process, does that still make him a gentleman?

Rewind, take it back. Hands on the clock corkscrew out of control and it's forty-eight hours earlier and none of this has happened.

Booth takes the treadmill up to a frenetic pace, his chest heaving as he races against no one. He likes to end his workouts with a burst of speed—the rush of adrenaline lasts through his shower and drive. It lasts until he gets to Brennan.

Her.

One thought and it's enough to spiral into a thousand million tangents. Booth is worried about himself, this fascination borders on obsession. Only it isn't, because he just cares about her…a lot. And she cares about him too.

Only not in the same way. He thinks.

He's pretty focused on his partner, not his feet, so he doesn't see the impatient-yet-apologetic-looking woman standing next to his machine until she taps on the display screen.

"Sorry," she begins, "the guy at the desk told me you've been on the longest, so…"

Booth is totally confused for a split second.

"What?"

"The treadmill? You can only be on them for forty minutes when—"

"—all the machines are full."

He glances around, and yes, it is so. Booth wonders how out of it he's been; he hadn't even noticed how crowded the gym had gotten.

He's off the machine, wiping it down. The woman keeps talking, chattering on and on. She's pretty, has a nice smile. He exchanges pleasantries; a have a nice workout, a brief goodbye.

Booth sees the woman again a few hours later. He's at his desk, alternately thinking about work and wondering what Brennan's doing tonight (probably working). How can he get Brennan to stop working all the time? Booth has this feeling that it used to be a lot easier. A dinner bribe here, a "let's discuss the case" there.

But, the woman. She's blonde, tall, and walking past his office.

"Hey!" she calls out, some Virginia twang rippling through her voice. It's warm and appealing.

"Hello," he responds, politely.

And just like that, they meet.

Her name is Caroline, and she does hail from the Virginia highlands. She's bubbly and almost happily aggressive in her manner of speaking. She's a nice girl with a big heart, and it shows.

She insists that she should bring him a coffee from the cart downstairs, repayment for what she terms 'shoving him out of the gym.' Booth assures her it's fine, but she's a Southern lady, and they live by their own code of manners. Somewhere in there this translates into coffee and a Danish.

She hands him the coffee and heads back to her desk. No phone number scribbled on the napkin, no flirty-flirty look as she heads to the elevator. Just a warm "see you tomorrow" and a smile.

He likes her. Not likes-her likes her, but she's nice and new in town. And he hasn't thought about a certain beautiful doctor in hours.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I am thinking the timeline for this is "early season five," since Booth memory issues seem largely resolved at this point in canon, and I am choosing to let them play out a little further here._

It's two days later, and Brennan is standing in his office right before lunchtime. Booth's stomach rumbles, but he shoves hunger to the back of his mind. Brennan's hit her stride, holding up an x-ray and waving her hands around with panache. He doesn't think she'd take kindly to being interrupted.

"—there's some damage to the Hallux, that's the big toe, Booth, that looks like it was made by grinding down the end—"

Booth winces, "What, like from torture or something? I thought this was a teenage girl."

Brennan tears her gaze from the plasticized sheet in front of her and looks directly at him. He meets her gaze, but shifts slightly as she moves to sit on the edge of his desk. It seems so familiar, almost an intimate sharing of workspace.

"No, it is a girl. The grinding likely came from the repeated motion of placing her weight on her toes. This, coupled with the slightly malformed metatarsals and the ankle remodeling, indicate to me that this girl was a ballerina."

Brennan pulls the leg of her slacks up, tugging off one of her shiny black pumps. Booth catches a flash of her ankle, a hint of pale skin.

She holds the shoe up; then shows him her hand.

"If this is our victim's foot," she says, wiggling her fingers, "then continually shoving it into her pointe shoes would eventually cause her bone structure to adapt to the narrow space."

Sticking her hand into the shoe, she squishes her fingers together to demonstrate.

Bemused, Booth smiles.

"Alright, I get it. Ballerina. Thanks for the very unscientific show-and-tell."

"It's not a problem. I want you to understand, Booth."

His comment was flippant, but the sincerity behind her eyes gives him a moment's pause. Because somewhere in the tangled recesses of his mind, he knows that she'd rather have an actual pointe shoe, and that she does not consider the hand a suitable substitute for a foot. Not matter how similar in bone structure they actually are.

But she wants him to understand, to be comfortable. And so she sacrifices scientific integrity for his mental well-being.

"Okay, I, um…I understand."

"She must have been a very good dancer," Brennan adds, matter-of-factly putting her shoe back on, "she had a very highly arched foot, and her injuries indicate that she practiced frequently."

"Good enough to have made someone jealous of her?"

"There is no way to know that from her remains, Booth."

He opens his mouth to say he didn't actually need an answer when he catches her smiling at him, happily watching him squirm for a moment.

She has a nice smile, even if it does seem a touch superior at times.

"Knock, knock! I've got lunch!" A voice rings out, and a pair of mile-long legs appears in his office doorway. Bearing take-out, no less.

"Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry," Caroline flushes, putting a hand to her mouth, "I didn't realize you were in the middle of something."

Brennan glances at the newcomer briefly, then stands. Booth watches her face, finding no trace of jealously, just mild interest. She reaches for the file on his desk.

He's almost disappointed.

"It's fine, we were just finishing up. Caroline, this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan; Bones, this is my friend Caroline Boegale."

Is it him, or do his partner's hands still suddenly when he says _friend_?

He hasn't got time to ponder the issue, because she's shaking hands, saying that _yes, she is the novelist Temperance Brennan_, and moving toward the door. He follows her.

"I will contact you from the lab with any further results," she says, nodding at him in farewell.

Whoosh, fast-forward and let the cars on the street move until their lights blur into streaming incandescence.

Booth leans back against the door. He cannot hear her stifled sobs anymore, without the noise he's practically alone in a foreign place. His eyes travel the shelves he can see from here, looking for the woman he knows in a collection of objects.

He's looking for a way to explain this, but he can't. Not the way one should, anyway.


End file.
